Time Capsule Pop-up Message

Yes, this is happening to me as well since upgrading to 10.6.5. I have two backups, one at work and one at home. I switch them out with a simple script and Marco Polo. Apple seems to have put in something to detect this. I hope we can turn it off because I was very pleased with how TM handled the two backup disks seamlessly until now.

Message was edited by: bryankate

bryankate wrote:
Yes, this is happening to me as well since upgrading to 10.6.5. I have two backups, one at work and one at home. I switch them out with a simple script and Marco Polo.

Do you see the message if you do the switch manually, via TM Preferences > Select disk?

It seems that Apple has changed the name of the key DestinationVolumeUUID to DestinationUUID in 10.6.5.

You can check this in the Terminal:

defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine DestinationVolumeUUID
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine DestinationUUID

The first command should fail on MacOSX >= 10.6.5 and vice versa.

Note that this breaks tools for switching between different TM volumes as they update the wrong key in com.apple.TimeMachine.plist. Hence the warning message. Those who use such tools (vsteiger, bryankate) might want to change the name of the corresponding key in their scripts.

I am also having the same issue, will download the tool and post the error

Ok, I found two things in the meantime:

1) @Pondini: No, the warning does not pop up when changing the backup location manually using Time Machine Preferences.

2) @daihithi: It seems that you're up to something here, so thanks for your hint! However, my script does not work on the DestinationVolumeUUID (now called DestinationUUID) key, but on the BackupAlias key. It is a very long data string that seems to have retained its name from 10.6.4. When I have a minute to spare I'll experiment a little with the script to see if working on DestinationUUID instead (or in addition) will do the trick.

You need both keys, BackupAlias and DestinationUUID.

The BackupAlias stores information about the target backup volume. This includes the path where it is mounted, and in case of a disk image its name and also the location of the image (e.g. network or local harddrive). This is necessary because TM attaches the backup volume prior to backing up and therefore has to know the location of the diskimage.

The DestinationUUID is used to verify that the attached backup volume is the correct one. This is a security measure against mixing up backup volumes. BackupAlias cannot distinguish between two filesystems with the same name. However, the filesystem UUID can do so.

You can get the UUID with

diskutil info /Volume/theName

and add it to your scripts that alter /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist.

See also: http://www.gearz.de/howto/OSX5/changeTMvol

OK, so it turns out Apple now expects something slightly different in the DestinationUUID field (of the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist). Prior to 10.6.5 this field was populated by the disk UUID, and now it is expecting the time machine volume UUID. For example, I have a USB disk that is mounted as the volume "backup". When time machine runs it mounts "Time Machine Backups" as a separate volume (referring to the sparse bundle on the backup disk). Prior to 10.6.5 I used the UUID of the "backup" volume in the DestinationVolumeUUID. Since 10.6.5,this key as changed to DestinationUUID and it expects the UUID of the actual time machine volume, in my case "Time Machine Backups". I confirmed this by changing the settings with the GUI and observing which UUID it placed in the DestinationUUID field. Since my script was using the wrong UUID it gave the warning.

Hope this helps.

Thanks, daihithi. Yes, setting both keys does the trick, the warning pop-up message is gone.
This was a useful thread, thanky'all.

Excellent. I am having the same issue with this recent update - could someone post a step-by-step solution for those that are less familiar with Terminal commands to alleviate this issue?

Thanks!

I would like to echo skahler's comment. Would someone mind posting a walkthrough? I have encountered the same issue in the last couple of days on my Time Capsule.

Thanks!

I added a line to my script to change the DestinationUUID after the line that changes the BackupAlias. I'm pretty sure I have the right ID because I just used defaults read/blah blah/DestinationUUID to get it (after the right drive was selected using TimeMachine's preferences GUI).

Buuuuut, I still get that pop-up. Any suggestions?

I've just experienced the same problem. Backups have completed successfully on my time capsule for over a year (and all of this morning), and now it tells me that 'The identity of the backup disk has changed since the previous backup'. The machine was idling (i.e. no activity by user, or on network by others).

I'm in the process of wiping the Time Capsule disk and starting over (got impatient, and don't need old stuff), but I did manage to dig deeper into the log file (I've replaced AFP mount path with { *}, my username with [user], and my Mac HD drive name with < *>).

The regular hourly backup was interrupted by a FSEvents process. Here's the full log at the time:

31/12/10 8:19:14 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Starting standard backup
31/12/10 8:19:14 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://{ *}
31/12/10 8:19:23 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Mounted network destination using URL: afp://{ *}
31/12/10 8:19:23 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_mount: /Volumes/Time Capsule, pid 33678
31/12/10 8:19:25 AM hdiejectd[33687] running
31/12/10 8:19:26 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
31/12/10 8:19:29 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule/[user]_0017f2c6e7e3.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of [user]
31/12/10 8:19:29 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of [user]/Backups.backupdb
31/12/10 8:20:09 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] No pre-backup thinning needed: 253.9 MB requested (including padding), 7.91 GB available
31/12/10 8:20:23 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.netauth.sysagent[33678]) Exited with exit code: 255
31/12/10 8:22:42 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Copied 1552 files (67.2 MB) from volume < *>.
31/12/10 8:22:44 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] No pre-backup thinning needed: 173.2 MB requested (including padding), 7.91 GB available
31/12/10 8:22:44 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Waiting for index to be ready (100)
31/12/10 8:23:16 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Copied 901 files (104 bytes) from volume < *>.
31/12/10 8:23:32 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Starting post-backup thinning
31/12/10 8:24:25 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Deleted backup /Volumes/Backup of [user]/Backups.backupdb/[user]/2010-12-30-072525: 7.91 GB now available
31/12/10 8:24:25 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed
31/12/10 8:24:25 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Backup completed successfully.
31/12/10 8:24:31 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Ejected Time Machine disk image.
31/12/10 8:24:32 AM com.apple.backupd[33677] Ejected Time Machine network volume.
31/12/10 8:24:32 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_unmount: /Volumes/Time Capsule, flags 0, pid 33714
31/12/10 8:24:32 AM kernel ASP_TCP CancelOneRequest: cancelling slot 16 error 89 reqID 39367 flags 0x9 afpCmd 0xF0000002 so 0xc3217f8
31/12/10 8:24:41 AM hdiejectd[33687] quitCheck: calling exit(0)
31/12/10 9:19:15 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] Starting standard backup
31/12/10 9:19:15 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://{ *}
31/12/10 9:19:23 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] Mounted network destination using URL: afp://{ *}
31/12/10 9:19:24 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] Creating disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule/[user].sparsebundle
31/12/10 9:19:24 AM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_mount: /Volumes/Time Capsule, pid 33830
31/12/10 9:19:25 AM hdiejectd[33836] running
31/12/10 9:19:35 AM hdiejectd[33836] quitCheck: calling exit(0)
31/12/10 9:20:23 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.netauth.sysagent[33830]) Exited with exit code: 255
31/12/10 9:20:44 AM kernel hfs: Initializing the journal (joffset 0xe81000 sz 0x2800000)...
31/12/10 9:20:48 AM hdiejectd[33850] running
31/12/10 9:20:49 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN
31/12/10 9:20:51 AM fseventsd[43] could not open <</Volumes/Time Machine Backups/.fseventsd/fseventsd-uuid>> (No such file or directory)
31/12/10 9:20:51 AM fseventsd[43] log dir: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/.fseventsd getting new uuid: 70444929-F67B-428F-B640-BFA104F39641
31/12/10 9:20:52 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] Disk image /Volumes/Time Capsule/[user].sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
31/12/10 9:20:53 AM UserNotificationCenter[33862] __CFServiceControllerBeginPBSLoadForLocalizations timed out while talking to pbs
31/12/10 9:35:27 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[216] (com.apple.syncservices.SyncServer) Throttling respawn: Will start in 6 seconds
31/12/10 10:00:21 AM loginwindow[565] in pam smauthenticate(): Failed to determine Kerberos principal name.
31/12/10 10:02:01 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] User continued after being warned of changed destination volume UUID
31/12/10 10:02:01 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
31/12/10 10:02:01 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] Ownership is disabled on the backup destination volume. Enabling.
31/12/10 10:02:07 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] Backup content size: 141.9 GB excluded items size: 30.7 GB for volume aargh
31/12/10 10:02:07 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] Compacting storage: 133.41 GB requested (including padding), 7.48 GB available before compacting
31/12/10 10:02:07 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] Stopping backup.
31/12/10 10:02:08 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] Backup canceled.
31/12/10 10:02:09 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] Ejected Time Machine disk image.
31/12/10 10:02:09 AM com.apple.backupd[33829] Compacting backup disk image to recover free space
31/12/10 10:02:19 AM hdiejectd[33850] quitCheck: calling exit(0)

Okay, so it wasn't able to find space to backup, and all subsequent backups were unable to find free space, so aborted. I had nothing of value on the Time Capsule, so began again after removing my own sparse bundles.

Would love to know what went wrong, so that next time I don't have to wipe and start afresh.

Would it be possible to get some step-by-step instructions for us not so tech-savvy users? I'm having the same problem here. 😟 Pleeeeease.

Kai